peteb

An old band leader used to run a jam on pretty much the same lines and for the same reasons. OK there wasn’t an actual list and you only got two songs but very similar apart from that. I used to be the house bass player for most of them when I was playing with him and they were usually fun. In my experience, running a successful jam night is a bit of a balancing act. For us it was a chance to play with our mates who we weren’t gigging with regularly, finding musicians who were new to the scene / area as well as giving youngsters a chance to get a bit of experience, not to mention the odd old-timer who didn’t gig any more but still wanted to get up and do the odd tune. I think that people have to realise that music scenes by their nature tend to be a bit cliquey. The guys who get the work are those who are well known, have decent networks and who everyone knows that they can play. I would have thought that jam sessions are the best way to introduce yourself and get the opportunity to become ‘one of the guys’ i.e. join the clique! Certainly, the most rewarding thing about being involved in the house band was finding a good new player you hadn’t played with before. Also, the guy who ran the jam (as well as others) used it as an opportunity to audition people without a formal audition, which was how I originally got the gig in his band.

That is quite right - there is a difference (although I would be strangely interested in hearing someone trying to play Whole Lotta Rosie in fives)...!

But sometimes you may have to compromise on the money you get to take the opportunity! Also, I am very happy to travel for the right band and the right gigs. The other thing from your OP is that sometimes I can take the band leader (or at least MD) role and sometimes I can just be a sideman and turn up and play what I'm told. If you want to work it helps to be adaptable!

I think that you have to judge each potential opportunity on its own merits. My only two essential criteria is that it is going to gig and that I can stand to be in the same room as everybody in the band. Realistically it is going to be a rock or blues gig of some description, otherwise they probably wouldn't look to me to play for them. Beyond that it depends on what the band has to offer. I do some gigs for the money, some for the music, some for the kudos of playing with musicians who are well regarded and some just for the craic...!

Not really the types of gigs I do, but a mate who has been in a pretty high level function band for many years told me that demand is way down (north of England), they are not working any where near as much as they used to and have been forced to reduce their fees accordingly.

Fair point, but if you are comparing them with TKS you have to acknowledge that Sweden is hardly a third world, low wage / tax economy...

The video above is very accurate if that is any help

Great tune (if somewhat overplayed) but I hope your singer has the range to pull it off. It also helps to have a second guitar. I have seen so many bad covers of this song it's untrue, not to mention a lot of singers come to grief trying to hit the top notes...!

Surely it's the band's job to engage with the audience and get their attention so that they can then entertain them? I think that there is a reason why the 2x45 minute sets has become the norm for covers bands in most music pubs. People generally go out to see a band, but also to meet up with friends. A 45 minute first set is not so long that people will lose attention if the band is half decent, then there is a bit of a break so that people can have a chat and get a few more drinks down them. Hopefully by the time you are ready to come back for round two, punters have had time to loosen up / hang out with mates, etc and are now ready to be entertained for the grande finale. I always think that you are trying to get the audience's attention for the first set to persuade them to stick around for the second, which is where you throw everything you have to make sure that they know that they have been entertained!

Assuming that they are half decent and have a modicum of stage presence, then why not??

Also very true...

I've always thought that if a punter can have a conversation without seriously raising their voice then we're not loud enough. Or as a guitar player I used to play with (who also owns a very successful PA hire / installation company) would occasionally announce to the audience "tonight ladies & gentleman, we will be using volume as a tool... and if necessary as a weapon"...!

I would suspect that's nonsense and if you want to break the rules it helps to have at least a vague understanding of the rules that you want to break!

I would say that is not necessarily the case with the best players I have come across (in a very different genre), but the main things they have in common is decent technique as well as a very good ear. I don't think that you need to be a technical monster to be a good musician, but surely it helps if you have a serviceable technique and a basic working knowledge of musical theory.

I believe that there are a couple - the Thirsty Scholar (Monday night) and the Jam Street Inn in Chorlton (Wednesday). I know about them via a guitarist called Michal Zykowski. I haven't seen Mik in the flesh for a few years, so best that your friend Google's them first to check I've got the correct nights as well as the addresses etc

The same for many a gigging musician!

I thought that it was Jean Beauvoir playing bass (among others) on many of the mid period Kiss albums

Not really sure that I would pay too much attention to the opinion of Gene Simmons on musicianship

I saw Whitesnake twice in their latter stages - once at the beginning of a tour and once at the end. The first time (third date of a tour) Coverdale sounded great. The next time he was awful and could hardly get a note out! Thunder were on that bill and Danny Bowes blew him away, but then he is somewhat younger than Coverdale and Thunder had only joined the last leg of a long tour.

Hi Kevin, I know the Cleckhuddersfax area a bit - lived in Brighouse for a while and went out with a girl who was living in Cleck when I first met her, although I lived most of the time over the other side of Bradford. I've never really thought of Cleckheaton as being a big town for live music, although I have played there once or twice.

It is indeed the Old House At Home. I'm guessing that it hasn't changed much in 30 years??

Two gigs depping for the R&B band over the weekend. The first one on Friday was a pub on the main drag in Wakefield (first pic below). Very quiet night, although everyone there was nice enough. I used my newly acquired 91 Stingray for the first set, which sounded great but it feels like it needs a bit more work on the set up, so went back to the precision for the second set. Last night was a tiny pub in Cleckheaton, squashed into a little alcove (see second pic below). We played a lot better than the night before, but the pub was pretty quiet and not the most appreciative audience I’ve ever played to. We did a couple of slow blues in the first set (rather nicely I thought) to the sound of tumbleweed drifting through the bar! First set mainly notable for some blonde coming onto the “stage” in the middle of a song to ask me if I was married! The second set picked up a bit and we had a group of 40 something women up dancing to the last three or four tunes, including a girl called ‘Kaff’ (I had to ask if her name was spelt with one or two ‘f’s). All in all, the weekend was not the highlight of my musical career. But we got paid and had a laugh and we’ll do it all again next weekend (but with a different band for me and hopefully different audiences).

No aggressive drunks or acts of senseless violence to report. Shame really, might have livened things up... To be fair, even the drunks stumbling past the door outside when we were loading out at the end of the night were unfailingly polite!

I often wonder how American bars manage to stay in business if everyone drives and then can't drink alcohol when they get there? The same thing applies to an extent here for live music bars. I had last Saturday night off so went to see a Rory Gallagher tribute in a great club venue in a different town about a half hour drive away. It would have been impossible to get home by public transport and would have been an expensive taxi there and back, so I obviously drove. I only bought one soft drink all night, so they can't have made any money behind the bar from me and the many others like me who went who didn't live locally.

To be fair, I haven't come across any punters being aggressively drunk at a gig for many years. I think it depends on the type of pub you play. In my experience most pubs with a reputation of putting live music on get a pretty reasonable class of punter! However I'm depping for a band playing a city centre pub near a railway station on Friday, so I might have something different to report after the weekend...!